 Colin and some new friends in Tokyo - Summer 2001 |
We have been the best of friends and the worst of enemies. Even today, I find few folks with the ability to touch my sore spots as he does, and I imagine the same for him.
Underneath it is love; trying to curb my excesses, ground my ideals; not only is his advice from the heart-source, it's often smart! The older I get, the wiser he gets. And he seems to get a great charge out of me. Ethan met him, sez we have similar skills and mannerisms, and we're using them in diferently way.
Colin works in high finance, Wall Street type stuff. He just completed his MBA at Stanford and is now working for an investment fund in London.
Until then I'm glad to have a nice couch to crash on in New York. While I was at Swarthmore, I had a good time visiting his place in the village.
To him I owe a good chunk of the credit for my recovery from high school crashin' burnin' - he kept constant faith in me, and pressure on the p'rents to maintain theirs.
After high school he took a year to work in the Lincoln Park Zoo selling hot dogs and raising money to travel in Africa. After a few months learning Swahili, he hitchhiked from Rawanda to South Africa. Later, with a friend Ron Lieber, he wrote about the value of taking time off from college. Thanks in part to a blurb from Ann Landers, the book became a New York Times bestseller. And he doesn't even fancy himself a writer! Grumble grumble, heh.
I used to taunt him, and he used to torture me. Once, Mom took us to Nepal. I was thirteen, he seventeen. He was bugging me so bad, I locked myself in the bathroom and slept in the tub to get away from him. I'm sure I didn't do anything to antagonize him.
When we'd heard that our father had died, I was touched. Here was my bigger stronger older brother, crying. He was much closer to Dad, he'd gotten a chance to know him and was more shaken by the loss.
We both attended Parker for fourteen years. We were in a play together, antigone it was. We were both president of our high school. Colin was more of an achiever than I was though - he had better grades all the way through. But both of us walked the line in eighth grade - he was threated to be kicked out, as I was.
Now we are more approachable, sane, successful even sometimes. Two flailing spastic brothers come to this.
Phone message from Colin in college feelin' sick (88k .aiff).
justin's links by justin hall: contact